The murder of a Brampton realtor was so violent, so horrific, that a veteran police officer had to fight back tears as he described arriving at the bloody scene to a Brampton jury this week.

Brampton realtor Devinder Kumar was stabbed 29 times before he died on Nov. 10, 2011, a jury was told on Tuesday.

By:Pam DouglasTorstar News Service, Published on Tue May 13 2014

The murder of a Brampton realtor was so violent, so horrific, that a veteran police officer had to fight back tears as he described arriving at the bloody scene to a jury this week.

“I’ve seen a lot of bad stuff,” said OPP Const. Don Pelan, closing his eyes and choking back tears. “This has ripped a hole in my heart.”

Devinder Kumar, 38, was curled up in a pool of his own blood on the side of The Gore Rd., north of Mayfield Rd., in Caledon on that chilly November morning in 2011.

He had been stabbed at least 29 times, mostly in his throat, neck and upper back, Crown Attorney Mark Poland told jurors in his opening remarks at the start of the eight-week trial.

Marlon Nurse, 31, and Darryl Plummer, 27, are on trial for first-degree murder in the brutal slaying of the popular realtor, who was a married father of two little girls.

They are accused of luring Kumar to the house Nurse was renting from him on The Gore Rd., chasing him to the street and attacking him with a large kitchen knife.

Kumar was still alive when passersby found him around 11:30 a.m., just moments after the attack.

With a police officer tending to him, Kumar, who could not speak, but was conscious, pointed to his wounds and then pointed up at Nurse, who was standing at the side of the road talking to police.

Nurse was originally considered a witness, but was soon arrested and charged, jurors have heard. Plummer was arrested almost immediately, south of the scene. He was found walking in and out of backyards just north of Mayfield.

Despite efforts to save him, Kumar died in the back of the ambulance at the scene. Both his jugular veins had been cut almost completely in two and he had gone into shock very quickly, jurors heard. Those were the most fatal of all of the multiple stab wounds, an expert testified.

Poland told jurors they would hear Nurse was renting the nearby house from Kumar, but the cheque he used to pay for first and last month’s rent had bounced, and he had no money to pay.

Numerous text messages sent between the two accused just prior to the killing will be entered into evidence during the trial, Poland told jurors.

Tuesday, forensic pathologist Kristopher Cunningham described for the court his findings. Jurors and many of Kumar’s family members attending the trial were spared seeing autopsy photographs as Cunningham used drawings to illustrate the location and number of stab wounds suffered by Kumar.

He suffered at least 29 stab wounds, and possibly more, Cunningham said, explaining the larger wounds could have been caused by overlapping injuries. Of those, 17 were in his upper back and back of his neck.

His larynx was “heavily damaged” and almost completely cut in two, and he had suffered a “sucking chest wound” that cut into his lung. The deepest stab wound was 12 cm deep to the right side of his abdomen that went as far back as his kidney on the left side of his lower back, Cunningham told jurors.

Cunningham was shown a picture of a large kitchen knife police discovered in a roadside creek near the murder scene and he told jurors it could have caused the wounds.